DVDs will be obsolete in 10 years: Bill Gates

[Nilfennasion]

My old man still has 8mm film reels. Just because people still have them...

[Rookie64]

I have one explanation for those films only being on VHS: the distributors are cheap and lazy.

I mean seriously... if you can get a film like Cannibal Ferox or Debbie Does Everyone In Italy Including The Pope, how hard can it be to get those pieces of trash onto a DVD?

A lot of those movies come from defunct distributors and production companies. Rights lost and no one is eager to track down most of 'em.
Big studios have no interest in such films, as they don't see a marketplace for them.

Collectors and serious film buffs go for a lot of 'em, and usually go the route of obtaining them in bootleg form.

Many of them are in the public domain as well.


Though it's not only many forgotten B flicks...there are thousands of movies from the big studios, independents and foreign markets that haven't found their way to DVD either.
The studios can only get to so many at a time - and they start with the titles that are in more demand first.
Some are being restored/remastered as well...and that can take time.

The term they use is "financial suicide" - if you release too many films at once, you'll lose more than gain and it'll kill your company.

Some movies will just never be reissued or released - there a thousands that never even made it to VHS.

What you'll find out if you look on the studio end, is most of the people working in that field don't even care about those films - they don't care if they see the light of day ever again.

Prior to the video revolution, many production companies would just get rid of their films - for either taking up space or to prevent bootlegers from getting ahold of 'em.
They never gave it any thought that those films could still make any money after their initial run.
This is the type of commentary you'll find coming straight from the B movie producers on some of the Something Weird DVD releases.
They had a hard time tracking down a lot of these films and some have missing footage 'cause the master prints were either lost or destroyed.


Serious film buffs, historians and collectors go for these films, but unfortunately the filmmakers didn't really care about preserving their own films - it was about making money...that's all the industry itself is about anyway.

[Nilfennasion]

Being that I've spent a fair amount of face time with the people who work at the Sydney branch of Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment, my first reaction is something like "tell me something I don't know". But thanks for saving me the trouble of explaining that.

Columbia Tristar have a sort of priority system, or at least they did when I last talked with them. First priority is their newest stuff, of course, because that generally involves the least amount of work. If you want to know where their "classics" rank in terms of priority, simply find out how much restoration work each film requires, and how much of a following it has. Ones like Lawrence Of Arabia get secondary priority in comparison to the newies, but they also get a lot of effort made on them. Ones like Killer Klowns From Outer Space, on the other hand, are a case of "when we get around to it".

Oddly enough, public domain films scare off distributors because they don't want to spend restoration cash on something they cannot garantee a return on. You wouldn't believe some of the responses I get to making that statement.

[Fred©]

YEAH!!!

I agree with Bill Gates!

But I bet Windows will be obsolete first!!! :P :P

Fred©

[mikesbytes]

The death of VHS as a pre-recorded source must be close, the video shops are stocking a ratio of 4 dvd's to one vhs and most of the single copy videos are in a dvd. And for mail order, the postage costs are better for the DVD.

For recording TV, I kind of feel that I should wait and jump straght from VHS to HDD recordable with a built in digital tuner and advoid having disks lying around getting lost or scratched.

[zoneless]

I think this really depends on what being obsolete means to you. Would you say video tapes and cassette tapes obsolete? Even if I say so, I don't believe everyone will give a standard answer.

More importantly, it is the usefulness that matters. As long as it serves some purpose, people would use it. So why does "being obsolete" matter so much?

[rmtaibo]

YEAH!!!

I agree with Bill Gates!

But I bet Windows will be obsolete first!!! :P :P

Fred©

Sure!

But I think the market (makers & customers) will decide the end of this story...
Maybe this thread will give us a good taste of the future... Good thread to save and read few years later...

[tag]

More importantly, it is the usefulness that matters. As long as it serves some purpose, people would use it. So why does "being obsolete" matter so much?

It doesn't! Gates' statement only serves to demonstrate that he is a retard. The standard definition of "obsolete" is "no longer used or useful". Of course, Gates would have no way of knowing that since such information is concealed in things called "books" (specifically, "dictionaries"). Since Gates knows everything, he has no need for such items.

[npaulie2000]

Eight track tapes on Sale! Three bucks apiece at any yardsale.

[Nilfennasion]

A term I prefer to use is "conceptually obsolete". It basically translates as "something better has been brought to the table, regardless of whether it is being brought into public usage or not". The CRT is conceptually obsolete, but the one thing keeping it alive is the expense of acquiring a Plasma, LCD, or DLP set.

[mikesbytes]

I see two terms for Obsolete.
1. Retail Obsolete. When the product is no longer readily available for purchase.
2. User Obsolete. When the product is no longer used by the majority of the user base.

34cm TV's would be a good example. Almost Retail Obsolete (thanks to the low pricing of 51cm TV's), but definetly not user obsolete, with currently owned products being used in the study or the kitchen or the like.

Perhaps Gates definition is "Not first choice retail obsolete". When the product, while still on sale is clearly not the choice of the majority of the purchasers.

[Sam Ontario]

I see two terms for Obsolete.
1. Retail Obsolete. When the product is no longer readily available for purchase.
2. User Obsolete. When the product is no longer used by the majority of the user base.

34cm TV's would be a good example. Almost Retail Obsolete (thanks to the low pricing of 51cm TV's), but definetly not user obsolete, with currently owned products being used in the study or the kitchen or the like.

Perhaps Gates definition is "Not first choice retail obsolete". When the product, while still on sale is clearly not the choice of the majority of the purchasers.

34cm (13 in. or 14 in.) TV is not obsolete in North America. Plenty of markets here, especially with integrated DVD players and VCRs. Major brands like Tsohiba, Philips, Sharp, Sanyo, Samsung and a lot of other manufacturers etc. still make them. I bought a Samsung 13" with VCR early this year though I already have a 32"TV, 27", 20" and a 19" at home for its very portable.

[Nilfennasion]

When Plasma TVs fall under $2000 for an 80+cm model, very few things below that size won't be obsolete. They are so easy to move it's like finally being in that Jetsons-style future.

[mikesbytes]

Sam Ontario wrote:

34cm (13 in. or 14 in.) TV is not obsolete in North America. Plenty of markets here, especially with integrated DVD players and VCRs. Major brands like Tsohiba, Philips, Sharp, Sanyo, Samsung and a lot of other manufacturers etc. still make them. I bought a Samsung 13" with VCR early this year though I already have a 32"TV, 27", 20" and a 19" at home for its very portable

Ah, so we can coin another term: Geographical Obsolense. Down under has been flooded with cheap no brand 51cm TV and has pretty much drowned out the brand name small TV's.

We may have great prices on cheap TV's in Aus, but we are jellous of your great mail order services up North.

[ViRaL1]

42" (I'm no good with metric conversions) Plasma for $2000 here. Supposedly rebadged Samsung.

[Nilfennasion]

42" = 106.68cm

The cheapest plasma I have seen in this country would be about that size, and $3999.

[mikesbytes]

The other disadvantage with the Plasma TV's (apart from the price) in Australia, is that most of them have 480 vertical lines, where in Aus, we have 576 (on DVD or SD digital) and an analog transmisson of 625 lines.

Nilfennasion, is your $4k plasma investment at risk of melting in the Queensland summer <sic> ?

[Nilfennasion]

I have never bought a plasma display for one simple reason. The second I have four grand to spare, I am using it to fly out of the country.

I know one man who has had a plasma display for over a year and had no problems with it. He didn't watch any analogue broadcasting, and I wasn't aware of this resolution difference, but I've seen 576i DVD-Videos played back in component, and I can't recall seeing any obvious signs of downsampling or the like.

[aero]

When Plasma TVs fall under $2000 for an 80+cm model, very few things below that size won't be obsolete. They are so easy to move it's like finally being in that Jetsons-style future.

really? my sense is that wireless networked personal lcd screens in the size of 17 to 19" and smaller are more of the future.

to me the storage method is meaningless. it can come and go. right now I transitioning to keeping my films on hard drive instead of dvd's.
All the televisions in my house are hooked up through my network and I can pick out of hundreds of movies that cost $2 per movie to store on hard drive. that is about 2 to 4 times the cost of burned dvd, but I save more than that in labor.

with modded xboxes and just cheap slave multimedia pcs (minus the cost of a dvd player) you can keep 40 to 100 films local and have a menu of a few hundred dvds available anywhere in the house. I run a cat 5e to the car to dump 40 films into the xbox under the passenger seat and never need to bring disks. setting up my suv with an 8" celing display, modded xbox with large hard drive holding 40 exchangable movies cost me 1/2 of the manufacturer dvd player with only 7" lcd

hard drive prices keep falling, the $.50 gig prices now mean $0.1 a gig in a couple of years so even if film is hg definition storage cost on hd will be comperable.

In a couple of years faster wireless and networked lcd's will mean you just stream this stuff around your house, for that matter I think we will see wireless cards integrated into lcd making them totally portable.

the question is the nexus of a given definition and storage cost of a certain duration. So two hours of normal definiton costs about $0.50 for dvd4 plus burning time,. Two hours, same definition on hddrive costs about $2 at $0.5/gig, but you spend no time burning and have instant indexing, indeed many mdea center software frontends, including freeware, will access imdb.com and have your front end allow you to select by film name, actor, genre, year etc.

anyway just some thoughts.

I find the discussion/analogies of physical media, vinyl, cd's, vhs to be dated. I mean the whole future will be streamed or stored on interchanabel media. even before consumer internet speeds get to 1gig an entire blockbuster could be the size of a vending machine in a supermarket that you stick a flash card into. flash memory will be available in 10 gig at $100 in a couple of years.

[Treebeard]

Better start preparing, Only 9 years 342 days left.

[ViRaL1]

Aero, what format do you store you movies in?

[Madz]

Just because something is obsolete doesn't mean I can't continue to enjoy it. Would I be considered old-fashioned (or crazy!) if I was to say that I have six betamax decks, a laserdisc player, an RCA Selectavision (CED) videodisc, two turntables, an 8-track deck, a Commodore 64 and a rotary-dial phone around the house? And lessee, I found a complete Atari 2600 w/ 45 cartridges at Goodwill 2 days ago. Just last night, I was becoming reacquainted w/ Space Invaders via a 32" Wega.

Speaking of Beta, there's where one can find lots of B, Indy & Obscure films! Gee, I must've collected lots of weird films released on tiny &/or long-defunct labels noone today's ever heard of. I'd say there's a better change of a blizzard in the underworld before some of these ever make it to DVD.

[Nilfennasion]

really? my sense is that wireless networked personal lcd screens in the size of 17 to 19" and smaller are more of the future.

Most consumers would never use such small devices for viewing their films. And there's also the price factor to consider. A good 19" LCD screen is about $3000 here. For another grand, you could get a good 43" plasma, so LCD is already facing an uphill battle.

Just because something is obsolete doesn't mean I can't continue to enjoy it.

No, but there are still some things that you never go back to once you get a load of their successor.

[mikesbytes]

No doubt flat screens will replace CRT once the price point drops enough. When this happens the spouse will demand one, based on them being less ulgy than a CRT.

In Aus they are scheuled to turn off Analog transmission in 2010 (but I doubt they will). When this happens, a lot of people may decide to buy new rather than use a settop box. I bet that by them, the CRT may of seen its day.

[Nilfennasion]

By the time the flat-panel displays reach a reasonable price-point, the hubby will find a compelling reason to switch, too: they are much lighter. I have an 80cm CRT that I am no longer using much, and it takes at least two men to lift. By comparison, you could probably juggle a 100cm plasma display.

[tag]

I have an 80cm CRT that I am no longer using much, and it takes at least two men to lift.

See, that's one thing I never really understood. I can understand the "flat panel takes up less real estate (desktop or otherwise)" argument, that they consume less power, etc., but how critical is the portability aspect?

I mean, I've had two Sony 21" CRT monitors for over 5 years and I haven't found a need to budge either one of them even a millimeter. Same deal with my Wega TV sets; they still sit in the same spot I told the delivery guys to place them.

[Nilfennasion]

Trust me, if you move as much as I have in the past three years, the portability issue becomes very important. Removalists in particular prefer plasma to CRT, and having lifted both a few times, I can see why.

[flaninacupboard]

then buy a projector

[tag]

Trust me, if you move as much as I have in the past three years, the portability issue becomes very important.

Yessssss, something to keep in mind should I ever have the need to enter a witness protection program.

[Nilfennasion]

I bet you that guys like Henry Hill swear by plasma.